The next day dawned bright and almost offensively cheerful, as though the sun had decided to taunt him for thinking today would be anything less than a trial by fire. William stood at his condo window, watching the city wake up below, and wondered if this was how gladiators felt before entering the arena.
He drove fast through Hartford's morning traffic, letting the roar of the engine fill the cabin like a declaration of intent. The silver car—a sleek, Boxster-inspired prototype that wouldn't look out of place in 1980's and 90's—was unlike anything else on American roads in 1961. While Detroit was still stamping out chrome-laden behemoths that looked like rolling living rooms, he had insisted Zephyr build something different. Something that whispered speed instead of shouting wealth.
Low-slung, sharp-edged, almost predatory in profile, it made every Cadillac and Ford he passed look like lumbering relics from a more pompous age. The naturally aspirated V8 snarled every time he touched the throttle, a sound that spoke of precision engineering rather than brute force. People on sidewalks turned to stare, mouths slightly open, trying to place what they were seeing.
He felt a grin seeing everyone gawk at his creation. This is what he wanted when people see his creation. Mechanics meet art.
The Harrow Building soon came into view—a hulking nine-story monument to an era that no longer existed but refused to admit it. Built in the early 1920s as a testament to the family's triumph over lesser mortals, it had been finished just as the Great Depression arrived to slap reality across every industrialist's face. Time had softened none of its vanity, only made it look more stubborn.
Brickwork as thick as a fortress wall, designed to outlast empires. Arched Gothic windows that glowered down at the street like disapproving eyes, each one framed in carved stone that had cost more than most people's houses. Gargoyles perched along the cornices, their stone faces worn smooth by forty years of acid rain and pigeon droppings, but still managing to look judgmental.
Even weathered and outdated, it commanded respect through sheer bloody-minded persistence. The building stretched across nearly two city blocks, overshadowing its glass-and-steel neighbors with the sheer bulk of old money refusing to admit it was past its prime.
He slowed at the gated entrance. A uniformed guard stepped forward, hand shading his eyes.
"Morning, sir—name, please?"
"William Harrow."
Recognition flickered across the guard's face, followed by a hastily masked unease. "Of course. Welcome back, Mr. Harrow."
He waved him through.
William eased the car into one of the executive parking spots reserved for board members. Even among the row of polished Cadillacs and Harrow sedans, the silver Zephyr looked like something out of the future.
Employees walking past slowed to gawk openly, their conversations dying mid-sentence. Some pointed, others whispered, all of them recognizing that something significant was happening. He ignored them all, stepping out and straightening the cuffs of his navy-blue suit with deliberate precision.
The fabric was lightweight and perfectly cut by a Savile Row tailor who understood that power could be subtle. Under the jacket, his crisp white shirt and deliberate lack of a tie were calculated choices. Modern. Clean. Uncompromising.
Boot heels clicking on the flagstones with military precision, he crossed to the main entrance, each step echoing like a countdown.
Inside, the contrast was immediate and jarring. Where the exterior dripped with Gothic flourishes, the lobby was a careful blend of old and new. Vaulted ceilings soared overhead, every rib traced in gold leaf. But beneath them stood electric chandeliers with clean glass shades, and a polished walnut reception desk that gleamed under recessed spotlights. The air smelled of leather polish, fresh flowers, and the faint trace of expensive cologne.
In one corner, a television the size of a small piano was playing a muted broadcast about the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy's face stern as he addressed the nation about Soviet ships steaming toward the Caribbean. William wondered idly how many board members even knew what was happening outside their narrow little world of quarterly reports and dividend checks.
The twin receptionists looked up in perfect unison, like synchronized swimmers breaking the surface. Both were young, both striking in the wholesome American way that magazines celebrated, with matching white dresses bearing the Harrow Automobiles logo in discreet silver thread. Their hair was carefully permed into identical bouffant waves that must have taken hours to achieve.
"Good morning, sir," the nearer one said, smiling with professional warmth that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Just to confirm—you are Mr. William Harrow?"
"Yes."
Her smile flickered slightly, and he caught the moment of recognition. The famous son. The one who'd walked away from all this to build something better.
"Thank you for confirming. The board members are expecting you in the main boardroom." She gestured toward the bank of elevators with a graceful sweep of her arm. "If you'd like, Heinz can escort you."
He let a cool smile touch his mouth, the expression of a man who knew exactly where he was going and didn't need help getting there. "Not necessary. I know the way. But thanks!"
If she was surprised by his refusal, she didn't show it—good training, or maybe just good instincts about when not to push.
"Very good, sir."
He turned without another word and walked toward the elevators, conscious of eyes following his progress across the marble floor. Part of him had expected some token obstruction—papers mysteriously misfiled, a deliberate delay to prove they still held the real power here. But everything was proceeding too smoothly, and that alone made him suspicious. In his experience, when things went exactly as planned, it usually meant someone else was making different plans.
The old brass-and-glass elevator looked exactly as he remembered. Scrolled golden gates that belonged in a palace, polished brass floor that reflected his face back at him in distorted fragments, and an elderly bellboy perched on a little velvet stool reading the sports pages with the absorption of a man who'd found his calling.
"Ninth floor," William said as he stepped inside, the familiar ritual bringing back memories he'd tried to bury.
The bellboy folded his paper with practiced efficiency and touched his cap with old-world courtesy. "Yes, sir, Mr. Harrow. Welcome back."
Even the elevator operator knew who he was. Apparently the news travels very fast here.
The brass lever thunked into place with precision, and the elevator began its steady ascent. Classical music floated from tinny speakers hidden somewhere in the ornate ceiling—something vaguely German and impossibly old, probably Bach or one of his more depressing contemporaries.
William closed his eyes and counted the seconds, letting the familiar rhythm settle his nerves. His mind going through his discussion with Liz yesterday.
The elevator shuddered to a stop with a mechanical sigh.
When the doors finally opened, he stepped into the broad hallway. The carpet was a dark burgundy, plush enough to muffle his footfalls. Along the walls, oil portraits glared down at him—every patriarch since Marcus Harrow the First, their faces carved into severe lines by an artist who had clearly never met an expression he couldn't drain of warmth.
At the end of the hall, the boardroom doors waited. Carved oak inlaid with scrollwork, twin gold handles polished to a gleam so bright it almost hurt to look at.
He rested a hand on one of them and exhaled slowly. This was it.
He pushed the doors open and walked in.
Seven pairs of eyes turned toward him, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. The silence was so complete he could hear the grandfather clock in the corner marking time with the persistence of a death watch.
He knew everyone—had grown up with their arguments echoing through family dinners, their petty feuds shaping every holiday gathering. Blood relations who'd spent decades perfecting the art of civilized hatred.
Richard Harrow II, his granduncle, sat with his hands folded on the table, looking as though he'd rather be anywhere else. A man cursed with the backbone of a damp sponge and a tendency to avoid conflict until it became unavoidable. He had been president before his father took over, and had been entirely useless at that. He looked like he'd rather be anywhere else on earth, including his own grave.
Marge—broad-shouldered, hair coiled into an uncompromising steel-gray bun—watched him without blinking. She'd been here longer than most of them, had outlasted three CEOs and two major recessions, and she carried her authority like a scepter. Her eyes were pale blue and absolutely pitiless—the gaze of someone who'd seen every corporate trick ever invented and wasn't impressed by any of them.
Charles lounged in his chair in a rumpled tweed jacket, pipe clenched between yellowed teeth. The family intellectual, or so he fancied himself. He looked bored to the point of offense, as though this meeting was beneath his considerable dignity.
Seymour, a skeletal figure in a dark suit that hung like funeral drapes, made tidy notes on a legal pad. He was here as the proxy for Elizabeth—an ancient matriarch whose continued survival was equal parts miracle and curse. At ninety-three, she controlled seven percent of the company from her Park Avenue apartment and hadn't set foot in New Haven in a decade.
Ronald Pemberton looked up from examining his manicured fingernails, flashing the lazy, handsome smile that had charmed a hundred gossip columnists and twice as many scandal sheets. He was good for nothing except providing tabloid fodder and spending family money on increasingly creative forms of self-destruction. His presence on the board was purely ceremonial, but thanks to his dead parents his voting shares were real enough.
Xavier sat at the far end, tall and wiry, his silver-tipped cane resting across his knees like a sword. Nearly eighty but he radiated the restless energy of a man half his age and twice as dangerous. His hawkish eyes followed William's every step with the intensity of a predator sizing up potential prey.
And finally, Richard III—his father's older brother, the would-be heir who'd traded boardrooms for movie sets three decades ago. Rumor said he'd spent more money in Hollywood than the company had earned in the last three years, but his twelve percent stake made him impossible to ignore.
The mahogany table stretched between them like a battlefield, its surface reflecting the light from crystal chandeliers that had witnessed four generations of Harrow family warfare.
Silence stretched, long and heavy as a held breath. William let it build, counting heartbeats, watching faces. Some tried to look bored. Others couldn't hide their curiosity. None looked particularly welcoming.
Finally, Marge cleared her throat with the authority of someone accustomed to calling meetings to order. As the senior board member present, she was acting as temporary chair in place of his grandfather.
"For the record," she intoned, her voice carrying the reedy authority of old age and long practice, "we are convened today in accordance with the family charter to appoint an interim president following Francis Harrow's medical incapacity. Mr. William Harrow has been nominated. Should a majority of family shareholders concur, the appointment will be confirmed."
She set the papers down with deliberate precision, looked up with eyes like chips of flint. "Mr. Harrow, you may address the board."
Before William could speak, Charles removed the pipe from his mouth and gestured with it like a conductor's baton, smoke curling around his fingers in lazy spirals.
"Come to make your big speech, have you?" he drawled, his cultured Boston accent dripping with condescension. "The prodigal nephew returns to save the family fortune? How perfectly... theatrical."
William stepped to the head of the table—his father's chair—and set his leather folder down with quiet finality. The sound echoed in the vaulted room like a judge's gavel.
"I'm here," he said, his voice carrying the calm before a storm, "because this company is dying, and none of you have done a goddamn thing to stop it. Oh, and alsoapparently because grandfather believes I am better at running company's than you lot."
The words hit the room like a physical blow. Ronald's smile faltered. Seymour's pen stopped moving across his legal pad.
Marge's weathered face remained impassive, but something flickered behind her eyes that might have been approval.
Charles exhaled smoke through his nose, a gesture meant to look dismissive but coming across as defensive. "How dare you—"
"How dare I what?" William cut him off, his voice gaining edge. "Tell the truth? Your last quarterly report showed a thirty percent decline in sales. The brake recall is going to cost us eight million dollars. We have lawsuits pending in six states. And meanwhile, you've all been collecting dividends like the company was still printing money."
"Now see here—" Ronald started, his handsome face flushing.
"See what?" William turned on him, and his cousin shrank back despite himself. "See you blow through your quarterly distribution in a single weekend in Monaco? See you use company funds to finance your yacht? I've seen the books, Ronald. All of them."
The color drained from Ronald's face. "You have no right—"
"I have every right. I own twelve percent of this company, same as you. The difference is I earned my shares instead of inheriting them as a consolation prize for being family's favorite disappointment."
"That's enough," Xavier's voice cracked like a whip, his cane striking the floor with sharp authority. But instead of defending Ronald, he fixed William with a calculating stare. "You want to throw stones, boy? Fine. But what makes you think you can do better? You walked away from this business. Now you waltz back in with your fancy European suit and foreign car, acting like you understand what we've been dealing with."
William met the old man's glare without flinching. Xavier had always been the most dangerous person in any room—brilliant, ruthless, and utterly without sentiment when it came to business.
"I understand that Ford is eating our lunch while you debate whether changing the chrome trim counts as innovation. I understand that Chrysler just announced a five-year warranty while we're still using brake systems designed in 1947. I understand that Japanese imports are about to flood this market, and when they do, companies like ours won't survive unless we stop pretending it's still 1955."
"The Japanese?" Charles laughed, a sound like breaking glass. "You're worried about rice-burners? No American will ever buy a car built by the people who bombed Pearl Harbor."
"You want to bet on that? Maybe leave your room once in a while."
The laughter died. Charles's knuckles went white around his pipe stem.
Richard spoke for the first time, "William, you're talking about fundamental changes to a company that's been profitable for years—"
"Profitable?" William opened his folder and pulled out a sheet of paper, slapping it onto the table. "We lost money in twenty of the last twenty-four months. The only reason we're not bankrupt is because we sold the arms business!"
Seymour's pen had started moving again, scratching notes with increasing urgency. As Elizabeth's proxy, he was probably calculating how much the old woman stood to lose if the company went under.
"That's a temporary situation—" Richard began.
"Temporary?" William's control finally cracked, his voice rising. "We've recalled sixty thousand vehicles! Sixty thousand! Do you know what that does to a brand? Do you have any idea how long it takes to rebuild consumer confidence after that kind of disaster?"
"It wasn't our fault," Ronald protested, desperation creeping into his voice. "The supplier—"
"The supplier we chose. The corners we cut to save money. The quality control we eliminated because it was eating into profit margins." William's gaze swept the table, landing on each face in turn. "Every decision that led to this moment was made by people sitting in this room."
Marge leaned back in her chair, studying him with new interest. "And what exactly are you proposing to do about it?"
Here it was. The moment he'd been building toward, the trap he'd been setting since he walked through the door.
"I'm not proposing anything," he said quietly. "I'm telling you what's going to happen."
He flipped to the second page in his folder.
"There are four immediate actions I will be implementing as interim president."
"Now hold on—" Charles started.
"One," William continued, his voice cutting through the protest like a blade, "we will cease production and sales of all current model lines as of close of business today."
The room erupted.
"You can't be serious—" Richard's composure cracked.
"Have you lost your mind?" Ronald was half out of his chair.
"Two," William raised his voice above the chaos, "we will issue a full recall of every vehicle manufactured in the last eighteen months and retrofit them with new brake systems at company expense."
"That's financial suicide!" Charles slammed his hand on the table, pipe scattering ash across the polished wood.
"Three," William's voice was iron now, "we will settle every pending lawsuit out of court, and every member of this board will sign a public apology taking full responsibility for the safety failures."
The protests died into stunned silence. Seymour's pen had stopped moving entirely.
"And four," William delivered the killing blow with surgical precision, "all dividend payments are suspended indefinitely. Every dollar this company earns will be reinvested in new designs, new manufacturing, and rebuilding our reputation."
The silence that followed was so complete that William could hear the grandfather clock in the corner marking time like a countdown to execution.
Then Xavier began to laugh—a dry, rasping sound like autumn leaves. "You magnificent bastard," he wheezed. "You're not here to save the company at all, are you? You want to bury us all!"
"The only thing I'm burying," William said quietly, "is the delusion that any of you are qualified to run a lemonade stand, let alone an automobile company."
Charles shoved back his chair so hard it toppled over. "You arrogant little shit! You think building toys for rich children qualifies you to lecture us about real business?"
"Toys?" William's laugh was sharp as broken glass. "Those toys are posed to generate more profit this year than this company has seen in the past three. Those toys represent innovation, quality, and customer satisfaction—concepts that seem to have been forgotten in this building."
The words hung in the air like an accusation of murder.
Marge spoke into the silence, her voice steady as granite. "The boy's right."
Every head turned toward her.
"About the recalls, about the lawsuits, about the dividends." She fixed each board member with a stare that could have frozen molten steel. "I've been watching this family piss away everything for thirty years. At least William has the balls to admit what we all know—that we're broke, we're incompetent, and we're out of time."
"Marge—" Charles tried to speak, but she cut him off with a gesture.
"Don't you 'Marge' me, Charles. You've been collecting two hundred thousand a year in dividends while the company barely made money to make payroll. You want to explain that to the board?"
The blood drained from Charle's face. He looked older suddenly, every one of his sixty-eight years settling into the lines around his eyes.
"So what's it going to be?" Marge turned back to William, and for the first time since he'd entered the room, he saw something like respect in her expression. "You want to run this company into the ground, or do you actually have a plan to fix it?"
William closed the folder and straightened, feeling the weight of seven decades of family history pressing down on his shoulders.
"I have a plan," he said. "The question is whether you trust me enough to let me implement it."
Xavier thumped his cane on the carpet, the sound sharp as a gunshot. "Enough," he barked. "We've heard the manifesto. Time to vote."
One by one, hands lifted around the table.
Marge raised hers first, steady and sure. Then Richard III, a small grin on his face—William knew from their phone call the night before that his uncle would support him, but seeing it happen still felt like a small victory.
Seymour hesitated, pen hovering over his notepad, probably calculating Elizabeth's position. Finally, with obvious reluctance, he raised his hand. The old woman was pragmatic above all else—she'd rather back the devil she didn't know than watch her investment evaporate entirely.
Three votes. He needed five for a majority.
Xavier's hand came up slowly, and his smile was sharp as a knife blade. "You want to play with fire, boy? Let's see if you get burned."
Four votes. Plus, another one from his grandfather. It was done.
When the tally finished, it wasn't even close. Eighty Two percent in favor—enough to eliminate any question of legitimacy.
Charles sat in stunned silence, his pipe forgotten and growing cold. Ronald looked like he was about to be sick. Richard II was staring at the table as though it might offer some escape from the reality closing in around him.
William closed his eyes for a heartbeat, feeling the moment crystallizes around him like cooling glass. When he opened them, Richard III was watching him with something that might have been respect.
"I hope you know what you're doing," Richard, his uncle said quietly.
William met his gaze without flinching. "I know exactly what I'm doing."
He closed the folder and straightened, authority settling around him like a cloak.
"Since the motion has passed," he said, his voice carrying the finality of a judge's sentence, "I expect full compliance from the management team. By tomorrow morning, I want every newspaper in the Midwest to carry headlines about our commitment to change and customer safety."
He paused at the doorway, letting the silence gather behind him like storm clouds.
"This is the beginning of the next chapter," he said, his words carrying the weight of prophecy and threat in equal measure. "Try not to get left behind."
Then he walked out, leaving seven family members to contemplate the wreckage of everything they thought they knew about power, and the boardroom erupted in furious argument as the door clicked shut behind him with the finality of a coffin lid.
In the hallway, William allowed himself one moment of satisfaction. Phase one was complete. Now came the hard part—buyouts and changes.
One step at a time.